


I will come back for you

by nightfall_in_winter



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF, Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types
Genre: Absinthe, Alternate Universe - Medieval, First Love, First Time, M/M, Poetry, Rough Sex, Soulmates, Tenderness, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2019-11-04 07:35:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17894195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightfall_in_winter/pseuds/nightfall_in_winter
Summary: CH.1 Medieval AU. Armie is a noble crusader and Timmy begs on the streets of Constantinople...CH.2 The tragic and volatile love story of Verlaine and Rimbaud retold by A&T.CH.3. 19th century. They look different and there is a huge age gap but they still belong together.





	1. Tana

***  
I saw your face for the first time on a cold, crispy day in November 1096. The sun was setting over the Golden Horn of Constantinople when the Frankish nobles entered the city on their way to the Holy lands. The old streets echoed with the sounds of horses’ hooves and the rhythmic resonance of a Western language I have never heard before.

I was the eldest son of a skilled pottery maker who made beautiful ornamented cruses and pots. In the good old times, he was selling his lovely creations in the vibrant markets by the Bosporos*. The carefree days of my childhood were spent in his small workshop behind Forum Bovis where I’d listen to the song of the throwing wheel, sweep the dusty floors or raise my clear and solemn voice to sing The King Throws a Party.

After a long day, when my father would stop to wipe his forehead and drink some Krasin (wine), I’d pinch some red clay from his wooden bucket and shape small, round beads that I’d wear proudly around my neck and small ankles, enjoying the rustling sound they made as I moved.

He passed away too early, long before I could learn his craft and I had to embrace hardship and poverty. My endless attempts to find work were futile. The rich traders in the port didn’t want my glossy hair and pleasant voice, they wanted strong arms unloading the goods from the ships in the morning chill before the lively crowd filled the streets. Nobody even wanted me as a servant. “Too skinny!” or “Too pretty!” they would say, as if these were mortal sins, before tsking at my bony wrists and pale complexion. So unusual for this part of the world where olive skin was the norm.

So here I was, 17 years old, emaciated and dirty, one of the countless beggars circling Hagia Sophia since dawn. The hollowed gourd at my feet remained empty all day and I couldn’t remember the last time I had eaten when the crusaders flew past us. You were the last one and the only one who stopped by the third Corinthian column, a few steps away from me.

The lesser never look the greater in the eye, so I remained fixed on your spurs and the golden gimps of your mantle. I reached out very hesitantly, almost instinctively, thinking that my hands have never touched anything as smooth as that red velvet and then I felt the cold tip of your sword sheath under my chin.

“Don’t hurt me! I was not going to touch it…” was all I could think about as I lifted my eyes and a tell-tale tear rolled on my cheek. When I looked up expecting a spit in my face, a kick or worse, I met eyes bluer than the Sea of Marmara at noon, when the sun rays are dancing on the surface and the horizon melts in sparkling waters. I saw pity, condescension, curiosity perhaps but no anger. The red cross on your chest and the eagle on your shield gave you a majestic, enchanting look that made my heart flutter like a bird wing. You were young, maybe in your mid to late 20s and you were tall and strapping, as if taken from an old tale where the high-born knights were always brave, handsome and loyal.

The sword moved further down over my scrawny neck and my clay bead necklace, my only reminder of happier times. You stopped at the muddy rag covering my chest when you heard a hissing sound and the small bulge there moved and jumped.

This was how you met Tana, my shaggy and very frightened kitten who kept me warm when the cold became unbearable and shared my stale bread or went hungry with me when we were given nothing. I remember the day when she found me. Her dirty small face and burnt ears and whiskers told me she had her own sad story. She simply sat next to me, as if I were chosen, our desolate eyes filled with the mutual understanding that only two unfortunate beings can share. She purred and rubbed against my leg until I took her and put her shivering body next to my heart. My heartbeat calmed her down and she slept inside my clothes for two days. Leaving my side after this never seemed like an option.  
You were equally surprised and amused to see my little companion and a shadow of a smile crawled over your lips. A couple of coins hit the bottom of my gourd with a soft chink before you spurred your horse and disappeared from sight down the road.

Your trusted esquire came as the evening was enveloping the stone walls and me and Tana were about to share some bread and hot leek soup bought with your kindness. “Come!” he said, one of the very few words he spoke in my language and he brought me to you. Your voice was so calming and despite not understanding a word, I knew that you were telling me not to be afraid. Such a melodic language, I want to speak it one day, I thought. You were strange like that, mysterious and insistent on looking a despised beggar in the eye with amiability and care I have never seen in my short life before. Or after.

***

If there is Heaven, it feels like this, I thought as I lowered my bony frame in a hot bath and your servant brought me some clean, soft clothes. Tana followed me in, she mewled and tried to escape at first but her tiny body grew to like the warmth. I blushed when you came in and used a hand gesture to invite me to get out. I slowly rose, ashamed of my nakedness and the sharpness of my protruding ribs but you came closer oblivious to both.

That first night you just wanted to make sure me and Tana – who could have guessed that her clean fur could be so fluffy - were fed and safe. I sat next to you by the fire and as the orange sparks danced in our eyes, you asked me something. Of course, I didn’t know what, but I started speaking anyway. About things that mattered to me but were never said aloud before. Memories, feelings and dreams stirring my insides, choking me, filling my heart with sadness and yearning for the past.

… The rough hems of my grandmother’s jute skirt. She wiped my teary face with it when I was upset. My baby sister’s soft, plump cheeks and her toothless smile when my curls tickled her tummy. She died in infancy. If I closed my eyes, I could still taste my mother’s spelt rolls that filled the tiny house with heavenly smell. Her shoulders were so low and her eyes so desperate when she asked me to leave as I was old enough already and she couldn’t have another mouth to feed…

Late was the hour when I asked you if you have ever felt a fog so cold, it freezes the air in your lungs and hunger so severe, it tears your guts apart. You said nothing, for you didn’t have a clue what I was saying, but you hugged me – me, the superfluous stranger that life chewed and spat out. And you held me as I cried, and you caressed my curls as you whispered in my ear and Tana purred on the rug. And I found home.

Je suis ici pour toi…(I am here for you)

On the second night, I listened to you, swallowing your flowing, unknown words about your life beyond the high mountains. My imagination dove in the bustling waters of the Loire river and I soaked in the fishermen’s songs at sunset when their nets were overflowing with fat perches and white barbels. You spoke about the glorious parks and gardens surrounding your chateau, green and lush in the summer, quiet and glistening in the winter. I run my hands over the old cathedral’s façade, striped in courses of white sandstone and black volcanic breccia.

As the sunrise approached, you gently put your hand on my cheek and exhaled some liquid sorrow. What was that bothered you, my noble knight of the West, when your voice trembled, and 6000 emotions crawled over your face? Fear? Regret? Remorse? Duty? Pain?

Si tu savais…(If you knew)

When the third night came, I sang for you The Song of the Sea – sweet, poignant and heartfelt. After you hugged me, your face was wet. Wet and aching like the deep, tenacious kiss you gave me when your lips pressed against mine. Tender and strong were the arms that lifted me and placed me on the bed, slowly revealing every inch of translucent skin. That night you did things to me that you’d never do to your noble, virtuous wife. Fondness and passionate vigour made peace in your heart as you held me like a child and made love to me like a man.

The body that only brought me pain and discomfort until now, was a perfectly tuned harp in your hands. That same body that I hated so much for being too delicate and frail to deal with the harshness of homelessness and penury. My slender legs roped around you and I didn’t want to let go, for I was made to tie you, to draw you even deeper inside me and to make delicious moans only for you. Like an artist, you drew every crease and edge of my body with your lips, enjoying my twitches and gasps. As your tongue teased my cock, your fingers spread my lips to make me fully exposed and yours only - sweet vulnerability that only heightened my excitement.

Aimes-tu ça, mon petit chaton? (Do you like this, my little kitten?)

And I hoped there was a way to show you just how much I wanted to stop time and live in this permanent loop forever: where your hands are on my hipbones, holding me firmly and your seed traces the curve of my ass. I let you in, with the dried lust at the back of my throat and the blood circulating in my softened limbs, I ate you and you dissolved inside to merge with my cells. Forever diluted and weakened by what you have found that night. On that cold November night in 1096, fate decided to touch us, two mismatched, flawed human beings who dared to create something heavenly together.

Je reviendrai pour toi quand les fleurs pousseront (I’ll come back for you when the flowers grow), you said to me as you jumped on your horse at dawn on the fourth day. You rode south with a lock of my hair in your silver teardrop locket over your chest and my clay bead necklace tied around your wrist twice. “To give me strength”, you might have uttered when you looked at me, the one who had nothing but gave you everything and I saw a blue promise…

***

You didn’t return the following spring when fresh daisies covered the meadows around the Hippodrome. Me and Tana waited and waited, me clutching her tightly, my eyes always fixed on the road where your mantle disappeared with the late autumn wind. People were coming and going, sometimes stingy and cruel, other times more open and generous, especially when the sun shone, and it was time for Pascha. Hagia Sophia was bustling, red eggs and tsoureki (sweet bread) were given to us and my gourd was unusually heavy for a bit. At least until the next dry spell when we were crestfallen and hungry again. But at least now I had a reason to live…

South, always south…

***

You returned in the spring of 1098, with the horrors of war etched on your face and a small bunch of fragrant violets in your hand, given to you by a young woman as you entered Constantinople. You circled around the cathedral with searching eyes and your anxiety grew by the minute. All your efforts to find me when you came back to the Queen of Cities that day proved fruitless. And you sat on the marble stairs, forlorn and crushed, as the sad truth slowly crept inside you. The wilted violets fell and scattered on the ground, the same flowers that were now growing on top of me in the quiet peace of the Lycus valley…

In this life, typhoid fever took me in the winter of 1097, a few days before my 19th birthday. But I vowed to return for you, find you and recognise you in each of my lifetimes on Earth.

A soft “meaow” and a purr woke you up from the trance and dried you tears. Tana. Thin as a rake, starving and always wandering around Hagia Sophia waiting for me to return. I will never know how she managed to survive without me, but I guess it was one of life’s inexplicable miracles…

***

A local legend says that the young count of Le Puy-en-Valey fought bravely and returned victorious from the Holy lands, yet his odd behaviour raised some eyebrows among the noble people in the diocese. All others returned with ruby fibulae and emerald bracelets for their beloved wives, but he brought home a stray cat that he found somewhere in the south. He showered the hideous creature with so much affection, people around him became worried for his sanity and he was truly heartbroken when the cat died, refusing to speak and eat for weeks.

On his deathbed he said that he wanted to take only two things from this world - an ugly clay bead necklace, so rough and unpolished, it could have been made by a child and a silver locket with a dark curl inside. His entire family were fair as winter stars in a frosty sky, so this whole story was probably just a product of someone’s vivid imagination…


	2. My hellish husband

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for shes-gone-rogue who got this prompt anonymously and asked me to do it, and for quima and ellibellybutton who really wanted this fic to see the light of the day. Love you, ladies!

The day of my conception was bleak, filled with sporadic winter drizzles and otherwise uneventful. A thin blanket of ice was covering the Meuse river, and everything seemed strangely quiet and lethargic. The streets of Charleville were almost abandoned if we didn’t count a small funeral procession that took the town baker to his final home and the old woman who begged by Notre-Dame d'Espérance, all draped in her moth-eaten shawl and joyless thoughts.

The world wasn’t expecting me to return yet when the captain rolled off his young wife with a grunt for the fourth time during his short leave from the army. She was the perfect wife material – good family background, sound education and boringly predictable. He didn’t particularly love or desire her, that much was obvious, but she was his necessary vessel of reproduction – wide-eyed, pliant and more than happy to leave him alone and go back to her books or tapestry without a word as soon as his seed was inside her.

As one could predict, my father was away for my birth in late October, for my baptism and for any other day that held some importance to me in my dreary childhood. He was chasing his Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur during the conquest of Algeria and nothing stood between him and his pursuit of glory and recognition. Others often said that he was good-natured and generous but to me he always remained the stranger who would visit us once every couple of years just to drown his sorrows in industrial quantities of Remy Martin and get our names wrong repeatedly over dinner.

Every time after his visits, mother would get the obligatory sickness and her huge belly over the following months resulted in another addition to our strange family. Mother was seemingly OK with this as the arrangement suited her apathetic and humourless nature. She could sit in her armchair with a blank look for hours and would only show some emotion when she was telling us off for not reciting our Latin sentences or ruining the upholstery, “the disrespectful vandals that you are”, as she often said. I don’t think she was even remotely interested in us, for we somehow stood in the way of an imagined version of herself where she was rich, admired and dignified and we were pristine, neat and well-behaved. Reality was different and she’d often shout and curse before adding in a matter-of-fact way that we will all be alcoholics and criminals one day and that’s no more than we deserved.

My mother. “The mouth of darkness” and the composer of bleak scenarios for our future.

Over the years, my father stopped coming home at all. The marriage had run its course long ago, but time was due for them to drop all pretence and go their separate ways. During my struggles with guilt, as I believed I was partially responsible for our misfortune, I suddenly discovered a friend. A somewhat illogical, unnerving and disobedient one, but one who would stay with me for the most volatile years of my life.

**Poetry.**

She took the form of a dishevelled girl who brought chaos and order to my long dark hours of observation when I couldn’t shake off a lucid dream or a sad face I’d seen in the crowd. She’d jump at me with the richness of visual realms I have not explored before and manifest herself in angry, sorrowful verses and unpredictable endings. She frightened me and consoled me with mystical whispers and calls from my unconsciousness – both vivid and subdued but always bearing the tension of my restless youth.

“Nuisance!” was mother’s verdict when she found my notes. What’s wrong with you? she probably wanted to add, and she meant why don’t you just read the Bible, gather meaningless knowledge, hate the poor and find yourself a nice salaried position like all social snobs do?

The abhorrence and the wish to break free from this life pooled in my guts like liquid fire. One day rebelliousness and blasphemy simply took over and I jumped on the first train to Paris with the clothes on my back and the freedom in my long hair. I had my notebook in my inside pocket, and I was holding a short letter form the greatest symbolic poet of our times who had read my poems and reached out to me:

_Come, great and dear soul, we are calling out to you, we are awaiting you._

I was 17.

*****

On that first day when I saw you again, I just stood by your window and filled up my lungs with the smell of the autumn in Paris – rotting leaves and moss, onion soup and ficelle, and newly found independence. I coughed nervously before I started reading for you, my hands restlessly switching between my messy hair, tattered notebook, cracked lips and the buttons of my worn cotton shirt.

Three things will always stay with me from that day: the sadness of those familiar eyes on a stranger’s face - bloodshot and blurred by alcohol and pain but also deep and warm. The sense that somehow, they appeared to clear and develop focus when you heard my voice. This brief moment of recognition evaporated quicker than your pregnant wife’s smile when you introduced me to her and said I will be staying with you for a while. And finally, the overwhelming despair that hit me as it dawned on me that, once again, I have lost the race with time.

 _I was late and you didn’t wait for me, so I had to make you suffer…_ Because you needed me, haunted and enslaved by a longing that was centuries old. It was the same hostile world out there – always pushing us in different directions and trying to keep us apart. So here started our Season of Hell…

*****

The inevitable came to us quickly, on a lazy afternoon warmed up by red wine and the last sunrays embracing the darkening sky. You approached me almost silently as I was writing on your large mahogany desk, fingers covered in ink and droplets of sweat on my upper lip. It wasn’t like you had to say anything. We were beyond flirting from the third day when all compliments were paid and this small, sexually charged silence settled between us. My heart battered against my chest and the hairs on my lanky arms stood up when your hand slipped under my shirt and violently squeezed my nipple. Your other hand invaded my mouth with two salty fingers sliding over my tongue, stretching and opening.

 _Es-tu excitée? (Are you horny?)_ you asked. Wine breath ghosted over my ear. Pain crawled over my back.

_Oui. (Yes)_

I have no idea why I didn’t cry, or shout, or fight. I remained glued to my spot, for my body was yours to do with as you please. Even when you entered me hasty and dry, in a rush to claim what belonged to you, I remained still and silent. I was not giving you the pleasure to think that I couldn’t bear this or that you could hurt me. I had to feel you deep inside, somewhere where only you could reach. My body had no other use than to try to bring us closer. Poetry paved the way to оur reunion but remained insufficient to fulfil the rapacious needs of two tired souls. We had to exhaust all forms of connection, minds and mortal bodies included, just to see how much passion we could take before eternal damnation.

This was the way it was going to be for the following two years: clumsy, short and rough in the minutes when she popped out to the grocer’s or when your baby son was having a midday nap. Sometimes you would just roll out of your marital bed and into mine, not caring if I were asleep or ill, just hungry for me and for anything I could give you. The bruises on her face and those on my pale ass grew exponentially and both bore the signs of your weakness. She wore hers as a victim, I hid mine as a wounded warrior who tried to feign invincibility just for a little bit longer.

If she went to stay with her relatives in the countryside, we travelled away from Paris where the rumours about our toxic encounters were rife. We had days where we would submit to absinthe and opium in run-down inns, cheap hotels and even open spaces. We would roll on the floor and spit angry insults at each other, before writing chaotic, turbulent verses, biting, kicking and fucking into oblivion. Neither of us could handle the truth – that our interdependence was so strong, it was eating us from the inside. We wanted ALL of one another, not realising that ALL was deadly but were unable to settle for anything less.

When I think back about those days, I don’t know how I survived, but I also realise that entering darkness was necessary. I didn’t feel frightened, not when I knew that you were the only perpetual presence in all of my altered states of mind. It would have been scary if I didn’t find you in each of them. For all I care, the whole damn world could have floated above us on a cloud held by green fairies or disappeared altogether, and it wouldn’t have mattered one bit, as long as you were there, your face and your dick both ridiculously elongated and distorted in my hallucinations…

I lingered dangerously between the willingness to take anything from you, even the blackened, tarnished version of our impossible love and the sadness of my realisation that in my two short lives I was only loved by you. Tainted, sinful, unbearable and precious you! I felt that I truly owned you only in my swallowed cries and muted anger, your lust exposed to the bone and my ass sitting on top of it…

My irreplaceable, hellish husband…

*****

A dilapidated mill in Belgium was our home for the night. Our supplies of opium and alcohol were finished, and we were hopelessly slumped on a dirty mattress filled with damp straw just before dawn. Neither of us had any strength left to quench our mutual obsession. Тhe fading stars looked upon us from above through the missing roof tiles as you drew me near, in a trance-like state and you whispered softly:

_I did come back for you...I kept my word._

 _I know…I saw you. And the flowers…_

_But you were…dead. How?_

_What’s death compared to this?_ I sighed and you just hugged me very, very tight.

 _So, you came back to find me again?_

I nodded.

 _And I wanted you to know,_ I continued. _Remember this? Le loup criait sous les feuilles (The wolf howls beneath the leaves)… Ne mange que des violettes (Eats nothing but violets)_

_Lycus valley? (Greek: wolf) The violets?_

I felt your tears at the back of my neck as you pressed me even closer to you.

_Mon petit chaton. (My little kitten)_

_Dying was the easiest thing. I have died a thousand times since. Every minute when we were parted. Just imagine the hours, the days, the weeks and the seasons, the years and the decades…_

_Tana had a good life. I gave her everything…_

_And what about me? Am I going to get everything?_ I asked but I knew the answer, I have always known.

_Not here. And not now._

_Then you know what to do, don’t you?_

As your lips found mine in a silent agreement, оur gaunt bodies finally arrived at the tenderness that was ever so elusive for us in this life. We would always think of this episode as a delirious dream where we were cured of the despair and the social obstacles and were finally just ourselves, not the broken humans whose bodies we inhabited now. Our punishment was never to be able to tell whether these words were real or just the ravings of two drunk misfits who reached the light at last. All that I know is that just before sunrise on a balmy July morning in 1873, we made love for the first time since 1096. And it hurt me more than anything else ever could…

 

Three days later, you pointed the revolver at my heart. As I was falling, I opened my arms to hug you. I had already forgiven you. And I was going to wait for you until The Drunken Boat visited these shores again…

 

*****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A lot of the biographical details used in this fic are real: The birthplace, the personalities of Rimbaud’s parents as described by Rimbaud’s biographer, the letter he received from Verlaine, the violent nature of their relationship, the absinthe and the opium, the long-suffering wife and the real extracts from his work “The wolf howls”. “A Season in Hell” is one of his most famous works and “My hellish husband” in an excerpt from it. “The Drunken Boat” is a personal favourite of mine, one of his finest poems. The rest of it is, of course, me trying to fit the details to match my story. 😊


	3. Paint me beautiful

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the 19th century. The age gap is large and they are very different in this life but they still belong together. Armie narrates this chapter.

[](https://ibb.co/Gc6Vwv8)   
[pic upload](https://imgbb.com/)  


*****

I saw her out of the corner of my eye on a chilly late morning when the remnants of the fog were still draping the roofs of the old houses. It was the middle of April and she stood by the big bay window of my master’s atelier. She was staring at the displayed pieces – icons, mosaics, soft pastel art. Almost hidden behind the ornaments of the stone column, she obviously did not want to be seen in her quiet moment of observation. The cobbled street was deserted at this time of the day after the early morning bustle, and only the brass bell above the wood carving workshop down the road would occasionally produce a sporadic jingle as it swayed in the wind.

I became aware of her subtle presence almost immediately, but I continued applying the gold leaf on the “Descent of the Holy spirit” in front of me. It was that precise time when you need to hold your breath in for what seems like a century because if you exhale, the gossamer piece of gold would float away.  I barely moved my hand, holding my heart in my throat while smoothing out the ends of the sparkly piece over the wooden board. One could even argue I was becoming really good at this since the beginning of my apprenticeship over 9 months ago. Just about to turn 20, I was still too young to make my own choices and to open my own shop. The icons were my master’s bread and butter, they were selling well and putting food on our table. However, my heart belonged to the vibrancy of the watercolours.  My days were filled with drawings of ascetic faces and angel wings, but my nights belonged to mountains shrouded in golden mists, wild forests and mystic rivers, lavender fields and majestic trees, all painted in the small hours in my tiny room above the atelier.

My master was a kind man, he knew what I truly loved and would give me a fatherly smile every time when he saw the dark shadows under my eyes. Recently he even allowed me to put two of my creations in the shop: _a medieval southern port with old boats and people with bright-coloured clothes and a small windmill with a battered roof, almost obscured by a weeping willow tree…_

I couldn’t see the eyes of the mysterious lady as they were hidden under her veiled headpiece, but I could tell that she was looking at my paintings and that made me feel both fascinated and scared. People were coming here for icons and my watercolours barely got a second look, but she seemed hypnotised and remained there for a long time before turning rapidly as I finally stood up from my chair to stretch my legs. As I walked to the shop window, I could hear horse hooves and I saw her luxury carriage disappearing behind the corner of the stone church.

Who was she? Women like her didn’t come here very often, perhaps not at all. Fine clothes, obviously an aristocrat, she seemed out of place among the poor artists and craftsmen in this part of the town. Was she lost? I was probably never going to find out, so I embraced my work again and almost forgot about her until she hesitantly entered the shop the following week.

The lady approached me cautiously. She was tall and delicate and moved slowly. Her white hands, slightly wrinkled here and there, were the hands of a woman in her fifth decade and when she spoke softly, I looked at her lips. They were the only visible part of her face that was not covered by the mesh veil and although they had lost the pleasing plumpness of youth, they spoke of fading outstanding beauty and magnetism that kept me transfixed.

“These paintings...” she said. “The boats, the windmill…”

“Y..yes?” Where did my voice suddenly go?

_God, her presence as she moved closer. Her waist was slender and girl-like in her burgundy silk dress, as if time had forgotten to put its cruel stamp on it._

“Who painted them? They are so different from everything else here…”

“I…I did, madam.” I blushed as she moved closer and her scent filled my nostrils – hand cream, lavender, ripe fruit…

“I want to buy them…How much?”

“Err, I…” I stuttered. In fact, I was so convinced that nobody would want to buy my creations that I never thought about a price.

She probably understood as she didn’t repeat her question. Instead, she silently took some money out of her green reticule bag embroidered with blooming florals and put the notes in my hand. She was way more generous than I could have ever anticipated, and I felt obliged to object.

“No, madam. This is too much…”

“Take it.” She insisted. “Just one thing…”

It looked as if she struggled to formulate the following sentence.

“These places…” She pointed at the boats and the small dilapidated mill and swallowed. “Have you seen them?”

“No, madam. I…Maybe…Can’t explain. Only…in my imagination.”

The woman nodded.

“Can I ask you…to do something then?”

“Yes, madam.”

“I would like you to paint the most beautiful thing that you can imagine. For me. Money is no object…”

“But…”

Then suddenly she lifted the mesh that was covering her face and looked me straight in the eye. Her left cheek was bruised, the mark was dark purple and prominent against her pale, transparent skin.

“Please…”

And just like that she disappeared swiftly before I could say a thing. Stunned and shaken, I barely acknowledged the horse hooves, frozen by an invisible force that was stopping me from running after her and begging her through my stifled sobs…

_Begging…_

_To hold her just for a second, to whisper in her ear that I know who she is, to taste the aroma of her skin, to wipe my tears in the folds of her dress, to tell her that she is my home, to ask her to let me be the mud sticking to the wheels of her carriage…Because I would have recognised her eyes anywhere. They were older and greener than the pine trees in my paintings with their dagger tops always ready to stab a heartbroken sky. Deeper and more mysterious than the depths of the Donets, they made me feel totally spellbound and helpless. The eyes that I have loved since a fateful November in 1096…_

*****

She came again when spring was in full bloom. I inhaled her as she entered the shop and I felt her steps – light and doe-like under the heavy silk of her dress. She wanted to know if her painting was ready. Her voice tickled my ears, gratifying and floaty, an otherworldly sound that lingered in the tight space between us.

When I gave her my hand, I was silent, and my heart felt almost edible in my throat. She followed me eagerly, like it was the most natural thing in the world as we climbed the steep flight of stairs that led to my room below the roof. There, under the sparse light coming through the small window, stood my beech easel and my…her painting. Almost finished, apart from the final touches. She gasped and choked on her tears as she touched the small purple flowers that dappled the sprawling green of the valley.

_Violets…_

A lonely figure was the only human presence in the painting: a handsome adolescent with raven curls, alabaster skin and sad emerald eyes. He was dressed in rags and had a gaunt face and bruised feet, but he possessed an angelic beauty worthy of Caravaggio’s brush. _At his feet, curled into a ball, lied a small kitten…_

By now she was weeping uncontrollably and there was one word that she repeated as mantra in a stream of many Whys and Hows, a word that was dearer to me than anything in the world. A word that folded the time and space until there were only memories of us two by the Sea of Marmara and in a ruined mill in Belgium.

_Tana…Tana…_

He…she was here again. And so was I.

Short are the centuries when they lead you to a coveted embrace and sweet are the tears when wept into a beloved one’s hair. She was in my arms and my lips were on hers in a frantic attempt to compensate for lost time. Yes, fate could give us mismatched bodies and different social positions, the stars could align to put decades or even centuries between us, but as I cried with her, I swore that I’d peel this life/any life layer by layer to get to the core of this feeling and resuscitate it every time…

Stripped off the advantages of youth, she tentatively let me undress her. Self-consciousness cupped her soft, saggy breasts and the dark bush between her veined thighs. Oh, how I longed to see her, all of her!

“I am sorry…” The apology broke my heart. “I am old and barren, and you are so young…”

Almost a millennium divided us and put us together. I just wanted him/her, in any form – more than I have ever desired another human being, more than life itself. I didn’t want to rush it as I have waited for so long to get it right. “He beats me” her mouth twitched as she answered an unspoken question and I covered her injured cheek with kisses, willing to undo all the pain and to give her what she deserved. Her anatomy was never going to be an issue, all I needed was the time to convey my tenderness and to explore the wrinkled shell hosting the soul of my eternal beloved. My body ached to taste her large crimson nipples and delicious armpits and my mouth longed to leave wet trails across her vulnerable bony spine and the crevice of her ass. Everywhere, as long I could swallow her perishability and give it back to her as a token of my undying love. My mind was burdened with those unlived moments when I could sink in those precious eyes and feel the meaning of my existence - to shatter myself into a thousand pieces; yearning, kindness, graciousness, strength, intimacy and live in them forever…

In the coming weeks, I made five more paintings for her, inspired by her quiet willingness to belong to me. It was a joyous time of inspiration and devotion, soul-binding time, free of questions and worries about the future. We have grown over the centuries and nobody could take from me the pleasure of being with the one I adored. She came to the shop almost daily and I lost myself completely in the depths of her worn, infertile body, forging Earth-shattering orgasms for both of us. And even if I had a thousand tongues and cocks, I could not have given her more in our sweaty moments of bliss when I was contracting inside of her, claiming what was mine and eating mute confessions from her mouth. Her nails left purple tracks on my back and her toes curled over my shoulder blades when I ate her soggy cunt which tasted of brine, semen and destiny. She was so mine in the frank moments of vulnerability when she allowed me to worship her. And I eagerly undid her with the vigour of my youth and passion, and I polished her from inside, like the jacks of an old harpsichord…Later, when the hunger settled down, I held her, unwilling to let go and I knew that she was the answer to all searches, now and always…

*****

The farmers were harvesting the winter wheat when she suddenly disappeared. By this time my art was changing. She was everywhere around me and nowhere to be seen and my paintings were filled with her perfect imperfections. Virgin Mary had her lips and the mountains from my landscapes were shaped like her bosom. The stars were small and pink against the dark night sky like her fluttering clit when it melted in the darkness of my mouth. Where did she go? My information about her current life was so sparse, all I could do was wait and pray for her. Months passed, then years and I was beginning to understand that I will not see her anymore. In my desperate heart I knew that she was gone, otherwise she would have found a way to come and get her paintings. My intuition told me that one day the bruises turned into something irreversible. However, when the pain was unbearable, I naively imagined that she simply forgot me, that she went to the countryside and lived the rest of her days in a little cottage with songbirds for company and a kitten curled on her lap…

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was partially inspired by the early life of Ilya Repin for this chapter but, of course, took full liberties with the truth. :)

**Author's Note:**

> The places mentioned in this fic are absolutely real: Forum Bovis, The Hippodrome, Lycus Valley and, of course, Hagia Sophia and the Bosphorus.  
> The King Throws a Party and The Song of the Sea are one of the very few medieval Byzantine songs survived to this day.  
> Red eggs and tsoureki are a part of Greek orthodox tradition for Pascha (Easter).  
> Tana means "Fire" in Greek. It is also the name of my beloved great grandmother. :)  
> The first crusaders reached Constantinople in November 1096. Among them were nobles from Le Puy-en-Valey. There is an eagle on Le Puy-en-Valey coat of arms.  
> *Bosporos is the old Greek name of the Bosphorus.  
> Le Puy-en-Valey is only 40 km from Le Chambon-sur-Lignon where Timmy spent his summers as a child. He liked the language and his beloved knight so much, he decided to come closer to him in this life. 😊


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